Artist Tasha Lewis has traveled far and wide across the US installing her stunning blue butterfly swarms in the urban landscape. The installations are formed of hundreds of cyanotype butterflies that have been printed onto cotton. Using powerful magnets placed within the fabric, each one is then placed onto metallic surfaces in a variety of patterns to create a swirling formation of colorful creatures.

Lewis’s work takes care not to permanently affect the environment, and each of the blue cotton prints can be removed, to create a dazzling—yet temporary—intervention into the landscape. According to the artist, the works are linked to the scientific use of cyanotype printing, which was a popular technique for image-making in the beginning of last century.

As a scientific method for documenting species, the cyanotype representation acts as as a stand in for the real thing, much as Lewis’s pieces bring vibrant scatterings of nature and its form into otherwise drab urban settings.